Probation officers attack plan to set up `boot camps' Reformers attack plan for young offenders camp 3/48pt in yes

Proposals to introduce a tough new regime for young offenders, based on the American military- style "boot camps", were condemned yesterday by probation officers and penal reformers as a return to the former failed policy of the short sharp shock. The plans to set up a pilot scheme are disclosed in a leaked draft copy of the Prison Service's annual corporate plan.

The Home Office has yet to decide precisely what type of regime it intends to introduce, but it wants a more physically demanding programme for teenage offenders. This would include strict work schedules, exercise and education. This could eventually be made part of the regime at all existing young offenders' institutions, which hold 16- to 21-year-olds.

The Home Office pilot is expected to be based on the "high- impact incarceration programme" run by the US Corrections Department on Rikers Island, New York. Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, saw a "shock incarceration camp" for non-violent first offenders, including burglars and drug dealers, when he visited Texas last year.

Inmates have to stick to a strict schedule, waking at 5am with a 10pm lights-out and no access to television or newspapers. Offenders must also wear their hair in US Marine-style crops and face a regime of early morning runs, classes and constant drilling.

While on the programme, inmates carry out community service work, including removing graffiti from public buildings. They are also given counselling on drink and drug problems.

The record of "boot camps" is considered unproven. Penal reformers believe the use of tougher regimes harks back to the discredited use of the short sharp shock treatment in the early 1980s. Lord Whitelaw, the Conservative Home Secretary, introduced the system at four detention centres, but it failed to reduce the rate of reoffending. It also failed to reduce the rate of crime among young people generally in the detention centres' catchment areas.

Paul Cavadino, chair of the Penal Affairs Consortium, an alliance of 24 organisations, said it was astonishing that the Home Secretary had proposed to "resurrect the most clear-cut failure in recent British penal policy".

He added: "Over the last 15 years the most successful method of diverting young people from crime has been intensive supervised activity programmes in the community, not headline-hitting examples of harshness which take us further back towards the penal dark ages."

The Association of Chief Officers of Probation said the "boot camps" would do nothing to reduce crime and would only undermine more successful existing schemes.

Mary Honeyball, the general secretary of the association, said: "Michael Howard is choosing to ignore historical precedents, and it's not difficult to see why.

"With his plans for secure training centres for young offenders having been seriously delayed, he felt the need to come up with a new headline-grabbing initiative to appeal to his hardline supporters."

Details of the pilot scheme may be unveiled next month when Mr Howard announces the result of a review of penalties designed to make community service orders and probation more "tough and challenging".

The Home Secretary has been anxious to toughen regimes throughout the prison system and appease the right wing of the Conservative Party.